Yea I made the mistake of going to 4wheelparts
CK5
Register an account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members.
change gearing possible for a noob?
- Thread starter ashman
- Start date
Problem is you have to "trust" that the shop knows what they are doing. To many times I have seen my friends who never do anything for themselves payto get stuf done. Then later on down the road the part breaks and the shop will ALWAYS blame something else was at fault. But will fix it for a few hundred more. Do it yourself and you have no one else to blame but yourself and you know its done right!
Case in point: I helped a friend replace the ball joints on a 94 blazer. He opted for overkill adjustable shocks. We got one side done and that was perfect. He took it to a shop to have the other side done cause he is lazy. Well the professional shop put the shock in backwards and put the adjuster knob towards the fricken driveshaft!!!! Didn't take long before the knob broke off now he has had nothing but hassle getting them to fix it since he paid for the shocks and didn't buy through them.
4wheelparts is like car salesman they agressively seach for labor jobs.
The story above about replacing the ball joints on my friends blazer started because he tried to purchase new 35" tires from 4wheelparts here in portland oregon. They wouldn't sell him the tires. Instead they told him he needed $4000 in front end work before they could sell him his tires. I think altogether even after he went to that other shop he spent less then $500 to replace everything that 4wheelparts wanted $4k to do.
went down to Advanced4wheeldrive today and asked them about a gearing change. looks like I can go up to 4.56 in the 12 bolt rear pretty easily, but the D44 front will require a carrier change and be more expensive.
I have a Gov-lock in the rear that I can reuse, but the Trac-lock in the front would have to be changed as well.
he said he could do the whole thing for a little under $1000.
I have a Gov-lock in the rear that I can reuse, but the Trac-lock in the front would have to be changed as well.
he said he could do the whole thing for a little under $1000.
Parts and labor front and rear?
yup.
That's what I was quoted for 1 axle just gears and install. No carrier
cool! thanks for the input guys. it seems like a decent deal to me, but I wasn't sure.
these guys have done a lot of good work for me over the years, but its always good to get some other opinions now and then.
Got Smoke?
1/2 ton status
The main tool most poeple don't use is the inch lb torque wrench, not a clicker you have to have a beam bender or a dial one.
The beam bender ones can be found at some bike shops, needs to read 1 to 35 inch lbs.
That is to set pinion bearing preload. Most people set em way to tight and that can greatly diminish the life of the pinion bearings. At worst it can cause massive heat and kill the gear oil and carrier bearings.
I charge 250 per axle to do gears. If the axles are in the truck. If they are out then 220, if they are 3rd members and you bring me just the third then 200, the 200 also holds true if you bring me just housings with no disassemble on my part needed.
So I basically charge 200 to do gears and about 50 bucks to take apart your axles so I can change them
I have heard guys doing them as low as a 100 bucks or as high as 500 so its quite a range. A mechanics shop who does book rate will probably charge you well over 500 closer to 800, I don't know book rate on all rear ends but the newer Dodges book rate is near 10 hours for some reason.
If you have patients anyone can do gears. If you don't have the tools you can get em really close. Which is fine for most people but I expect my gear setups to last the life of the truck. At min 200k with no problems. So I am very careful with my setups.
Also I have helped a couple guys that set up their own gears that had worked for a long time but their settings were way off.
A bigger axle is more forgiving of a poor setup. If you are setting up a sami axle for a guy running 35s or a toy axle running 40s you better be dead nuts on
Ok I am going to need to regear the D60/D80 in my Dodge within the next month and I want to buy the tools to do it right and have access to a neighbors press. I know the inch/lb torque wrench and the dial indicator aren't that expensive, but what else do I need to do it? I have a buddy willing to teach me how to do it. I've looked up the yukon bearing puller on Randy's and its $440 for the one able to do my D80 carrier bearings. Any alternatives?
One thing to remember. Every one of these guys here who are experts did one for the first time sometime.
Probably with less help than you would get here.
true. if I end up putting it off until this winter, then I may tackle it. just don't want to put the truck out of commission for too long during the summer when I could be playing with it. :P
Ok I am going to need to regear the D60/D80 in my Dodge within the next month and I want to buy the tools to do it right and have access to a neighbors press. I know the inch/lb torque wrench and the dial indicator aren't that expensive, but what else do I need to do it? I have a buddy willing to teach me how to do it. I've looked up the yukon bearing puller on Randy's and its $440 for the one able to do my D80 carrier bearings. Any alternatives?
I picked up a HF press and bearing removal kit and got my magnetic dial indicator from summit. I had to get some longer bolts for the bearing puller from lowes. But other wise it worked pretty good. I did my Dana 44 first a couple months ago, then a few months later I helped PBlaze do his front an rear 10 bolts. If you take your time and are patient. It's not bad and with Dana's if you make a set of set up bearings it helps alot.
so you basically did it without any special tools, other than the press?
I do have a torque wrench And i picked a cheap micrometer from HF. To keep track of shim packs. But nothing to crazy involved. My Dana took me almost 10 hours because I found a pattern I like and then adjusted a little more and went back. I was really nervous about messing it up. But in the end it was very straight forward I keep good notes for every change I made and made sure to measure what I took out of the original gear set and used the chart to find a good starting shim for the pinion. On PBlaze's we had more problems changing the inner axle seals then the gear set
You really need an in-lb, beam style torque wrench, a ft-lb torque wrench and a press for a gear install. A micrometer to measure the carrier shims is nice so you can measure them. I used to reinstall ,or try reinstalling, the factory carrier shims and measuring the backlash to figure out what size shims it needs. I like using factory style thick shims not the small thin BS ones they give you in an install kit (you'll see once you open them up what I'm talking about. As far as getting the pinion depth right, little word of advice the housing is a constant and unless you change the housing the pinion depth will not change. I've tested this theory on the first 50 rears I've done.... people can have a different opinion, but I was paid for 6 1/2 years to do mainly rearends everyday for a dealership and never had a comeback (I've done at least 500 or more). So reuse the factory pinion shim. Make sure you have the pinion bearing preload set correctly and set the backlash.... its that simple.... don't over think it bc a lot of folks do.
thanks guys. this is something I've always been too scared to do, but have wanted to learn. maybe I'll attempt to do the front first and see how it goes. at least if I screw that up I can just yank the guts and drive it somewhere. 
Also to make life easier get a 24"ish piece of 1/4 flat bar to mark and drill holes in it to hold the yoke still while you tighten the pinion bearing.... you can buy one too but they are around $70 and include a 1/2" drive at the end for a breaker bar
Best advice is to rent the video I linked to on the first page. If you still feel like you don't know what you are doing after watching it then you probably should look for a repair shop.
He goes through the entire process step by step including tricks like taking a die gringer to the inside of the old bearings you remove so they slip on and off. This help immensly at setting up the bearings and shims. By the time your ready to press on the new bearing you pretty much have things dialed in and only need to use the press once.
He goes through the entire process step by step including tricks like taking a die gringer to the inside of the old bearings you remove so they slip on and off. This help immensly at setting up the bearings and shims. By the time your ready to press on the new bearing you pretty much have things dialed in and only need to use the press once.
Very true with Dana axles having the shims between the bearings and the carrier its nice to hog them out a bit with a die grinder to make it all go faster to get the backlash set. But backlash and pinion bearing preload are the main things to worry about.
